Taxify the African ride-hailing app company is ahead of Uber Technologies moving from an Estonian startup to a tech unicorn within five years reported The Wall Street Journal WSJ According to a report in the paper citing Taxify the company has 24 million active users in six African countries including Uganda South Africa Nigeria Tanzania Kenya and Ghana To be considered an active user of the company the person has had to request a ride within the past month Uber meanwhile has 13 million active users reported the WSJ noting the latter also has operations set up in Egypt and Morocco In an interview with the WSJ founder Markus Villig said the company reached unicorn status in May when it raised 175 million giving it a 1 billion valuation Investors in the round included Daimler AG The company plans to use the funding to grow during the next couple of years The investment by Taxify is going to be in the hundred of millions of dollars range the executive told the WSJ Demand in Africa for ride-hailing services is a lot bigger than in the developed world and Europe because of the lack of public transport and low car ownership Villig told the WSJ And due to high unemployment people look for easy and flexible ways to make money The paper noted that Taxify has been able to get ahead of Uber by catering to the needs of the locals in the countries it operates in For instance in Uganda it is ahead because it started first with motorbike hailing Uber waited close to two years to enter the Ugandan market with UberX car service and then motorbike hailing after that Very quickly we realized this is a boda boda industry and that there was a huge opportunity here said Julian Byamugisha Taxifys operations manager in Uganda referring to motorbike hailing We said lets do boda as quickly as we can do boda NEW DATA Why Banking Consumers Prefer Convenience Over Security No one is safe from cybercrime Yet even with looming risk of fraud at an all-time high most consumers care more about convenience than data security 705 percent like authentication methods that are easy to use The inaugural edition of the Digital Identity Lifestyle Capsule report examines more than 150 data points and explores why speed convenience and ease of use can make or break consumers relationship with their bank Related Items africa investments News ride-hailing app Taxify Uber Whats Hot